Miramax once owned The Lord of the Rings and sold it for about $12 million
In the late 1990s Miramax was Peter Jackson's main backer for The Lord of the Rings. Disney, its owner, balked at paying for two films and wanted one. Jackson refused, so Miramax sold the rights to New Line Cinema in 1998 for roughly $12 million, and the story became a trilogy.
Brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein started Miramax in Buffalo, New York, in 1979, naming it after their parents, Miriam and Max. The idea was to distribute independent films the big studios thought unsellable. The first real hit came in 1982, when they merged two Amnesty International benefit concert films into one American release, The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Taking foreign films and recutting them for American audiences became a house habit.
Through the late 1980s and 1990s Miramax led the independent film boom, handling Sex, Lies, and Videotape, The Crying Game, Clerks and Pulp Fiction and producing Shakespeare in Love. Its biggest earner, Chicago, took more than $300 million worldwide. Bob's Dimension label launched the Scream and Scary Movie series. The aggressive editing had critics: Jim Jarmusch refused to recut Dead Man, which then got a tiny release. Studio Ghibli's producer reportedly presented Harvey with a replica sword and a shouted warning against cutting Princess Mononoke.
Disney bought Miramax in June 1993 for $60 million plus more than $40 million of debt. The brothers kept unusual autonomy, though Disney still blocked releases such as Dogma and Fahrenheit 9/11, and a dispute over the latter helped end the partnership in 2005. Disney's Bob Iger also questioned whether the brothers were counting overhead and their own bonuses when claiming profits. They left to form The Weinstein Company and took Dimension with them.
Under Disney the label shrank; staff were cut by 70% in 2009 as Disney focused on brands it could use across theme parks and merchandise. It was sold in 2010 for US$663 million with 700 titles, bought by beIN Media Group in 2016, and has been part-owned by Paramount since 2020.
Source: Miramax
